Lost in America, the book, not the movie

I never liked giving book reports in high school. Or even in college. Mostly because there's the likelihood I never read the assigned book.

Truth is I wasn't much of a reader.
Until I became a writer.

My perspective on the written word has come full circle. And now I no longer read because I have to, but because I want to.

And I'm not talking about reading the newspaper, either the NY Times, IRL. The Washington Post online. And even the Wall Street Journal when I find a way past their paywall. With the help of my friend George Tannenbaum, I have been getting my hands inky with books. I'm halfway through the book pictured above.

It's written by Dr. Sherwin Nuland, a man with whom I have much in common.

Turns out when his family traversed the Atlantic to escape the pogroms of Eastern Europe they arrived on Ellis Island, whereupon the admittance clerk translated his father's occupation, a tailor, and wrote down Nudelman, Yiddish for Needle Man. Get it?

Well thanks to the 23andme folks, and correspondence with cousins I didn't know I had, I found out my great grandfather was also a tailor. Similarly, he hightailed it to America to escape drunken
Kossacks.

The book recounts the doctor's youth, first in the pastoral grounds of the East Bronx. And later to apartment living in the West Bronx, near Jerome Ave (where many of the scenes from JOKER were filmed.) In the vicinity of the Grand Concourse, which at the time was known as the Champs D'elysee of the Jews. Who knew?

It certainly didn't seem like that when we visited there.

The doctor grew up poor. As did my family.

My father was determined not to stay that way and worked as waiter by day and went to college (CUNY) by night. He didn't become a CPA until he was 38 years old. And only by sheer persistence and dogged determination did he succeed.

Sherwin had a troubled up and down relationship with his father. As did I. The book, his memoir, is an examination of that dynamic and his growing understanding of a father who he was often at odds with. He comes to this understanding via empathy. And the burgeoning ability to place himself in his father's shoes.

It is thought provoking and haunting at the same time. It resonates because in all those battles and screaming matches and sometimes even physical blows with my father, not once, never, did I look at the situation from his POV.

How could I? I was a kid. A stupid, myopic, selfish kid.

As the past week in America has demonstrated, we could all learn to put ourselves in other people's shoes. Because not only are we $26 trillion in debt, when it comes to Empathy, with a capital E, we are even deeper in the hole.